Sig Christenson is a veteran military reporter who has made nine trips to the war zone. He writes regularly for Hearst about service members, veterans and heroes, among other topics. He is also the co-founder and former president of Military Reporters and Editors, founded in 2002.

Investigations

11/17/2012

Elite trainers at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland have been busted in the past 10 years for DWI, assault, abusing trainees and for using heroin, cocaine, Ecstasy and marijuana.

The offenses, disclosed in response to a Freedom of Information request by the San Antonio Express-News, show a pattern of misconduct since 2002 in a training corps that has been reeling in the wake of a sexual misconduct scandal that has ensnared 25 boot-camp instructors, who are accused of victimizing 49 female recruits.

The Air Force documented 81 cases that were not sexual in nature over the past 10 years, with most of them handled in secret administrative procedures.

They generally resulted in sentences that included reprimands, loss of rank and forfeiture of pay — though commanders sometimes suspended punishment.

Nearly three dozen other cases involved sexual relationships, most of them consensual, underscoring a pattern in which military training instructors have become involved with their students, despite a code forbidding such contact.

Lawyers who defend soldiers point to broader problems with military discipline.

“Talk about more core values, who should have more core values than Gen. (David) Petraeus (who resigned as CIA director under a cloud of sexual scandal)?” said Frank Spinner, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who represented a soldier convicted of rape in the Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground scandal in 1997. “So if he cannot ... discipline himself, then how can we expect (a military training instructor) to be (self) disciplined?”

“A pattern of superior officers abusing their power, victim-blaming, intimidation and cover-up of criminal behavior has been well documented,” said Nancy Parrish, founder and president of Protect Our Defenders. “Unfortunately, this type of behavior is nothing new in our armed forces.”

Instructors are touted as top-flight noncommissioned officers, carefully selected because they mold civilians into airmen, a task that requires them to serve as role models.

But the sex scandal that has ensnared the instructors, two of whom were involved with 10 women each, has triggered a dramatic reassessment.

11/15/2012

WASHINGTON — A fractured command culture that included what an Air Force investigation called a “leadership gap” helped fuel a sex scandal at Joint Base San Antoni-Lackland involving instructors who preyed on trainees.

The investigation, released Wednesday at the Pentagon, found leaders were insulated from training and that barriers “at nearly every level” limited the flow of information about instructor misconduct.

A shortage of instructors, who were starting their days before 3 a.m. and leaving for home at 9 p.m., along with a lack of unit oversight made for a toxic mix that set the stage for abuses.

Related doocuments: Lackland recommendations; Lackland training flaws

One instructor, for example, had illicit encounters with 10 women in boot camp and now is serving a 20-year prison term.

Some were too immature or inexperienced to be in jobs that gave them so much power, the investigation concluded.

“In simple terms, what happened is we had a breakdown of good order and discipline among a relatively few but not insignificant number of our instructors,” Gen. Edward Rice Jr., head of the Air Force's training command, told reporters.

“How this happened is attributable to weaknesses and gaps in the institutional safeguards that are designed to prevent this kind of behavior,” he continued. “Why this happened is related to insufficient leadership oversight concerning preventing and detecting these gaps and weaknesses, and an inadequate level of self-policing by our instructors.”

The Air Force has investigated 25 basic training instructors and has identified 49 airmen, all women, as victims — a number up slightly from last week.

Rice earlier this year tapped Maj. Gen. Margaret Woodward to lead the investigation that encompassed 215 in-depth interviews and a survey of 18,000 people.